Date archives "April 2007"

I recently discovered Peter Koenig’s blog, and his work with workshops where people can investigate their ‘money consciousness’. So I updated our pages on the social production of money, with some of his articles, for example one with his hypotheses on the Future of Money, which are very congruent with our own. How then, does… Continue reading →

If you want to collaborate on the practical implementation of p2p-based exchange infrastructures, then keep the month of July 2007 free, and consider attending the workshops in Germany of the Detmold Collective. Among the goals cited are the following: * Trust enabled P2P Value Creation (hospitality, learning, media, activism, finance, production, trade, communication infrastructures, services,… Continue reading →

A contribution by FranÃ§ois Rey, to update our Wiki entry on Augmented Social Networks. Francois Rey: There is a plethora of social networking websites, each being like an island on the web, unconnected with the others. The real social networking will happen when all these can connect and integrate with each other. Such idea can… Continue reading →

Collanos is a new groupware tool that is based on P2P content distribution and copying mechanisms. It’s pro’s and con’s are reviewed here by Techfold. Please note we keep track of online and offline group facilitation tools here

taking on from where Michel left… 2. (Andrew Keen): The digital utopian much heralded â€œdemocratizationâ€ of media will have a destructive impact upon culture, particularly upon criticism. â€œGood tasteâ€ is, as Adorno never tired of telling us, undemocratic. Taste must reside with an elite (â€œtruth makersâ€) of historically progressive cultural critics able to determine, on… Continue reading →

I’ve been a big fan of McKenzie Wark’s previous book, The Hacker Manifesto, so it is with pleasure I further distribute this announcement about his very latest book: Excerpt: The Institute for the Future of the Book is pleased to announce a new edition of the “networked book” Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark. Last year,… Continue reading →

Here is some quick commentary to the main points made in Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur. My responses are in italics. AK-1. The cult of the amateur is digital utopianism’s most seductive delusion. This cult promises that the latest media technology — in the form of blogs, wikis and podcasts — will enable everyone… Continue reading →

There are many critics, but here James Cascio argues that it will be a boon to participatory culture. Large excerpt from an article on his excellent blog on Open Futures. Excerpt: “I’m excited about the OLPC machine’s potential because it’s so clearly a revolutionary device, both in the sense of it having capabilities that nobody… Continue reading →

Andrew Keen’s new book,”The Cult of the Amateur” aims to expose the grave consequences of todayâ€™s new participatory Web 2.0 and claims it threatens our values. Here’s a summary of his key points. I will respond to some of them in a separate posting. The material is taken from the IDC mailing list. THE ANTI… Continue reading →

We recently reported on the dutch open source car which is expected to be produced in 2011, as was confirmed by our associate George Dafermos, who talked to the designers. Such open hardware might have the same effect on economics as open source had on software. Instead of price setting based on monopolistic rents, with… Continue reading →

The Beyond Broadcast Conference held in 2006 attracted more than 300 participants, from public policy makers, public broadcasters, academics, and media businesses – all concerned about one thing: the participatory culture and spaces of the Internet. In the narrator’s own words: The days of a small number of professionals making content available for a vast… Continue reading →

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales interview on Fresh Air, April 19, 2007 Â· Jimmy Wales helped create Wikipedia, the interactive online encyclopedia founded in 2001. Users write and edit Wikipedia entries themselves; the site also has a dedicated corps of editors. There are often “edit wars” over entries â€” some, including the one headlined “2006 Lebanon War,”… Continue reading →

Iâ€™m returning from a very productive lecture trip which brought me to Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Avignon-Carpentras, Beziers-St. Chinian, and Girona, Spain. It was a renewed occasion to tell the P2P story, and to learn from the people I met. If there was an underlying theme to the various encounters, then it was the need for… Continue reading →

Local peer-to-peer software that can be used to link computers directly via WIFI without a router. As reported by Network World: “When there are two computers in the same room, it doesn’t make sense that they must go out to the Internet to communicate. WiPeerâ€™s main added value is the ability to keep things local.â€

Leonard Witt has just posted an interview with Eric von Hippel, the author of the strongly recommended book, The Democratization of Innovation, at the PJNet.org. Topics include the advantages of freely revealing business and technical advances and the key role of lead users in social innovation. See our bookstore where you can order this book… Continue reading →

WeÂ´re reproducing an item from William ShanleyÂ´s blog, explaining the rationale behind the Give Get Nation initiative. The story starts by describing the increasing rich-poor gap in the U.S., then describes an initiative that could be part of a set of solutions to reverse the trend. Excerpt: “Evolution Solutions, a young, New Haven, Connecticut-based Internet… Continue reading →